Manhattan Micro Loft, New York

Architectural Interiors / Merit

Three hundred and twenty square feet isn’t much of a footprint, even for a New York City apartment. But this Upper West Side walk-up offered other compensations. “It had this great, vertical sense of space,” says architect Scott Specht, AIA. Stripping out an “unusable, odd” interior, Specht and partner Louise Harpman shaped the resulting volume into a bright, super-efficient pied-à-terre.

Tansu-inspired staircases rise from the living area to a cantilevered sleeping loft, and then to a green roof terrace, which spills daylight into the spaces below. “It has a mini-Guggenheim-ish thing going on,” Specht says. “It sort of spirals.” To save space, he says, “there are no closets. All the storage is under the stairs and in built-in cabinets.” The jury deemed the project not only “elegantly done,” but also a harbinger of things to come. Said one juror, “We’re all headed toward smaller urban living spaces.”